Development update #141 for SCUM from developer Gamepires lays out work still in progress and the roadmap toward a patch due this quarter and within Q3. The update highlights art and UI work, a new common cold mechanic with symptoms, an armor rework, base-building additions, and ongoing encounter-system fixes.
Teams have focused on visual upgrades to cuts and bruises, UI changes, a new common cold mechanic with symptoms, and an armor rework ahead of the quarter’s planned release. Progress is steady.
The level designers are building a host of new terrain elements and new base-building pieces that the community has asked for, though specifics were held back to avoid spoilers. The hard-surface team continued work on the military tomahawk and the Tommy gun, and also reworked art for multiple in-world props. On the soft-surface side, improvements were made to female clothing, and sculpting began on a headband item, along with continued work on the keyhole shirt. Animators are mostly fixing bugs while also starting animations for a trench gun, and sound designers are applying broad audio fixes.
UI artists continued to iterate on the painting tools and new level-design concepts, while designers refined the familiar cold mechanic alongside in-game text updates. A heavy focus is on the encounter manager, which has improved optimization but still requires tuning in areas such as spawning behavior and potential server settings to make encounters feel more balanced.
Bugfixing is a significant theme across teams. The update notes indicate that there have been quick follow-up fixes for issues left by the previous patch, and that attention is now concentrated on the next release. There are player-facing toggles already, like the option to stop puppets opening doors or vaulting windows, and the team is considering similar options for puppet speed and jumping, though nothing is promised.
The Q&A clarifies a few specifics: encounter manager work helped optimization, but spawning still needs fixes, and the team wants to add visible cues for the cold beyond a health-bar indicator. One short quote sums up part of that change:
For readers who want the full list of notes and the original wording from the developer, refer to the development update #141 on Steam News, which carries the full text and images straight from the team.
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